Overview
At a glance
Is this game right for my group?
ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.
Harder to teach
High replayability
Highly interactive
Scales well
Deep strategy
How it plays
How does it play?
In The Bark Side, you can be a bad doggie as much as you want — as long as you're not the one caught in the end. The game consists of a sixty-card deck, with five copies each of the numbers 1-12.
Core mechanisms
Key systems that shape the decisions players make.
Read the full game description
In The Bark Side, you can be a bad doggie as much as you want — as long as you're not the one caught in the end. The game consists of a sixty-card deck, with five copies each of the numbers 1-12. At the start of a round, each player is dealt a hand of ten cards (or in later rounds, each player receives an equal number of cards with any remaining cards being set aside). Each player chooses two cards to pass face down to their right-hand neighbor, then the round begins. In the first round, choose a starting player at random; in later rounds, the loser of the previous round begins. The starting player chooses one card from their hand and plays it into the center of the table. Each player in turn must play a card of the same strength or higher; if a player can't play higher or doesn't want to, then they must discard their single lowest card. This is called a "tail-tucking move". After each player has played a card, whoever has played the highest card (with later-played cards breaking a tie), leads a card to the next round. If at least one player has performed a tail-tucking move, then you can play a set of cards of the same strength (from two- to five-of-a-kind) instead of a single card. If you do, in turn, each player must play a set of the same strength of higher; if they can't or won't, then they must discard a number of their lowest cards equal to the number of cards in the set. A player cannot play a set that would leave them with no cards in hand, which means that the final trick of the round must be with a single card. Whoever plays the highest single card loses the round, and they collect their card and the two lowest-valued cards, then place those cards in the doghouse in front of them. You scoop any cards not in doghouses, then shuffle and deal the next round. When a player collects seven different types of cards in front of themselves, the game ends and they lose. (Alternatively, the game ends if so many cards have been placed in doghouses that you can't deal at least five cards to each player.) When the game ends, whoever has collected the fewest cards wins.